Since the release of HWC’s review of Coolermaster’s new Hyper 212 Plus HDT cooler we’ve had quite a few folks inquire about its performance on AMD’s AM2/AM3 platform. I figured that since I’d already ordered one to try out on my MSI 790FX-GD70, I’d take some pics of the process and put them up along with some comparison temps. (I’ll post up a chart in the review thread once I’ve got all of the #s in). This is not an official HWC review (the quality of the pics will attest to that… :) ), it’s just my own personal mini-project that I hope will be useful to the folks who were looking for more information on this cooler.

As a bit of background for those of you who are used to seeing me running nothing but WC’d Intel rigs, and who might be wondering where I’m going with this new build…

I cut my OC teeth on S754 AMD procs with a MSI NF3 K8N Neo Platinum motherboard, and decided that I’d give them a shot again once the Phenom II AM3 platform started to look promising. I’d already ordered my gear when the review for the Hyper 212 Plus came out, and as it happens, my first quality air cooler was CM’s Hyper 6+ on that very motherboard so I couldn’t resist the urge to complete the cycle and give this new cooler a try for my return to AMD.

The great majority of this has already been covered by AkG's review, but I figured I'd try to cover all of the steps in case somebody out there with an AMD platform has never installed an aftermarket cooler. Please excuse the poor quality of the images... I never did get the hang of taking decent pics.... :)

On the left is AMD's stock cooler. It's a simple matter of flipping the latch on the side to release the spring tension on it. Once the pressure is off, the square holes on the spring bar can be manouvered off of the plastic tabs. Be careful when you remove the heatsink as there will be an airlock between the heatsink and the CPU (caused by the thermal compound) which will effectively "glue" the CPU to the bottom of the heatsink. If you pull too hard without breaking the seal, you risk pulling the CPU out of the socket and damaging the pins. It's best to apply a mild upwards force on one of the corners of the heatsink at the same time as you rotate it back and forth.

On the right, we see the top retention bracket with the CPU in the center. Since the Hyper 212+ comes with it's own backplate we'll need to remove those 4 screws to get it (and the plastic backplate) off.

In these images we see the backplate from the other side of the motherboard. Once you remove the 4 screws from the top retention bracket this piece will also come loose. I've had to hunt these things down from time to time when selling a used AMD board, so I make it a practice to attach the top and bottom pieces together with the screws and store them in the motherboard box for future use.

That's it for motherboard prep, we're now ready to start installing our new toy.....

Moving on, let's get to the start of the installation process for our new heatsink. Shown above are all of the parts we'll need to attach the backplate to the motherboard. We've got the backplate, 4 standoffs/screws, 4 nuts, and Coolermaster has been kind enough to provide us with a phillips nutdriver so that we don't have to dig up a wrench.

If you haven't figured it out yet, installing this cooler requires that you remove your motherboard from the case. Once you have it out it's a simple matter of aligning the backplate with the holes on your board (for AMD the main body of the backplate goes flush on the back of your motherboard), feeding the standoff screws through those holes from the top of the board (image on the left), and then attaching the nuts to the screws from the bottom (image on the right).

Once you have all 4 nuts secure, you can tighten them using the nut driver, however you might want to leave them loose for now to make it easier to line up the mounting screws.

Here's the finished product, ready for mounting the cooler to our motherboard. As I mentioned previously, there's a fair bit of slop in the mounting holes, so it makes life a lot easier if you don't tighten these up yet. This allows for the standoffs to be muscled into place once it comes time to thread the cooler mounting screws.

Next up we're going to mount the Hyper 212+ to the motherboard. Pictured above are top and bottom images of the mounting bracket which will secure the cooler. This is articulated to allow it to be inserted between the heatpipes. If you want to save yourself the same confusion as I originally had, you might want to pay particular attention to the orientation of the curve on these legs. (more on this later....)

Pictured above is the top of the heatsink's baseplate. If you compare the hole in the center of it with the previous image of the bottom of the mounting bracket you'll see how the two mate up. There's also a small pin that prevents the mounting bracket from rotating once it's in place.

These two images show the correct installation depending on the orientation you require in your case. The image on the left displays the installation for a standard front-to-back orientation, while the image on the right is for an up-down orientation. If you look at how the legs of the mounting bracket curve around the heatpipes in the first image, you should have no problem (unlike I did... :) ) getting the second configuration to work for you.

We're almost ready to mount the cooler, but there's one more step left. If you look at the screw mechanism on the mounting bracket, you'll see that there are actually 3 positions (middle / fore / aft). In order to line up with the standoffs on AMD installations, all of the screws must be positioned in the middle setting. This is accomplished by pulling up on the screwhead to overcome the spring detent. Once that's done, all that's left is to line up the screws and tighten them down into the standoffs.

Don't forget to tighten the bottom nuts (under the backplate) once you have the threads started, and of course, don't forget to remove the plastic protecting the surface of the base (clean it with alcohol) and to apply your favorite thermal compound. (Or the one provided by Coolermaster.)

There we have it.... Front and side views of a standard front-to-back install. I'll let you folks figure out the fan mounting brackets on your own. :)

In case anybody is interested in pairing the Hyper 212+ with a MSI 790FX-GD70, here's a few more shots to show clearances.

There's at least a 1" clearance between the cooler and a video card installed in the first slot.

Plenty of clearance between the first set of memory and the cooler with the stock fan installed. Higher than normal memory sets would have no problems even with a 38mm fan.

Standard height memory can be installed in the closest slots with the fan installed, but it is a tight fit. A 38mm fan would be tight over the memory but it "should" fit. Installation/removal however would require removal of the fan.

Plenty of room for a 38mm fan to clear the heatsink.

That's all I've got for now. I'll be running some load temp benchmarks on it later today/tonight, and will update the review thread with a chart once I've crunched the numbers.

Steve, those pics are actually pretty good quality, lots better than found on reviews on other sites. Nice to see another person take the plunge on Phenom 3. When you do get a chance (not the right thread sorry) but please do mentioned if it it was cheaper than an i7.

Steve, those pics are actually pretty good quality, lots better than found on reviews on other sites. Nice to see another person take the plunge on Phenom 3. When you do get a chance (not the right thread sorry) but please do mentioned if it it was cheaper than an i7.

Can't wait to see your benchmark and cooler results.. :)

What he said... Booyeah for taking the plunge!

That 212+ looks pretty darn skinny actually, its good to know since it will more easily fit more boards with a push/pull configuration.

Nice pics, it is interesting to note that the backplate is facing one way for Intel cpu's and the other for AMD. I find this to be a very good cooler for the $.

Yeah, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do a pictoral of the install process. The differences aren't huge, but might be confusing for somebody who's never done an AMD install and can only find images of Intel installs. The major differences are the backplate, and the fact that the mounting bracket must be oriented differently for an up/down configuration (unlike the intel install).

Quote:

Originally Posted by miggs78

Steve, those pics are actually pretty good quality, lots better than found on reviews on other sites. Nice to see another person take the plunge on Phenom 3. When you do get a chance (not the right thread sorry) but please do mentioned if it it was cheaper than an i7.

Can't wait to see your benchmark and cooler results.. :)

Thanks for the kind words on the images. They're not bad, but SKYMTL and his merry band of scriblers set an awfully high bar when it comes to the quality of pics. I don't have the setup to get the lighting right (hence the yellow/brown background on a few of the images).

I've never priced out an i7 rig for myself so I'm not completely sure of the direct comparison. I do know that it's hard to get your hands on a top-of-the-line-chipset motherboard for $200, and that the processor was a lot less expensive. The only comparible pricing would have been on the DDR3, but I wanted a full AM3 rig.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CMetaphor

What he said... Booyeah for taking the plunge!

That 212+ looks pretty darn skinny actually, its good to know since it will more easily fit more boards with a push/pull configuration.

Yep... it also offers a lot of choice when it comes to push/pull with higher CFM 38mm fans. :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eagle Eye

Great Pics Steve, and on a small note I appreciate the larger text Looking forward to the results of your benchmarking consider myself subscribed.

EE

Heh.... maybe it's a "getting older" thing, but I've always found that one extra bump in font size makes a big difference in readability for me.... :)

Anywise... spent the whole night getting this stuff together last night, so now we're off to mount it to the testbed, put some power to it, and see what we can get out of it. :)

Unfortunately it's going to be mostly apples-to-oranges as I don't have another cooler (besides the stock cooler) to compare to, but it'll at least provide a reference point WRT the stock cooler, and WC.